Archive for year 2015

I don’t usually do these year end summary things but someone said they liked reading them and it seemed a particularly eventful year for me, so without thinking about it too much, here is a quick summary.

Had $4000 worth of work done to my car.

While that car was in the shop, got rear ended so hard it totaled the borrowed car I was in, spun me 180 degrees into an intersection, and I didn’t remember anything for a few minutes.

Elly moved in with me while the condo she bought was being renovated.

Got to use my acting and musical talents in the great original play, 100 Heartbreaks, which I loved with a passion. So much so, I’m pretty sure the director hates me because of my impassioned opinions.

We then both moved into the super sweet renovated condo which we love so much.

On the 4th of July, narrowly avoided getting hit by a truck that was t-boned and flew right at me landeing inches from me on its side as detailed here.

My view of the crash that nearly included me.

About 45 minutes later as also detailed above, I was hit by an oncoming swerving car that luckily hit my back left side, causing me to swerve across the oncoming lane, through a ditch and fence and stopping in a field, totaling that car which had just had $4000 worth of work done earlier in the year.

My grandfather, Dr. James F. Cooper died. He was a amazing man and beloved figure in the community and the tributes from all over including so many former patients, friends, etc. (such as this one), really drove home what an impact he made. It also inspired this post from me.

On Thursday, I paid tribute to the life of Dr. James Cooper on the House floor. Dr. Cooper was a veteran of World War II and the Korean War, a physician, and an active VFW member .Posted by Rep. Bill Flores on Saturday, October 3, 2015

The day after my grandfather’s funeral, I went to visit my dying father for what would be the last time. On September 16 he died from pancreatic cancer and I wrote this eulogy for him.

I played many gigs with 3 different bands, one of which I’ve been with since 1994.

I had the pleasure of acting in many different films, commercials, plays, projects, etc. and work alongside many amazing people including a short film with Lance Henrikson!

Got out and auditioned (and was cast in) Control Issues, an amazing improv show at The Hideout with some of the best people you could ask to perform with.

I started a new journey with a new agent, Jason at Acclaim Talent is the best!

I made my living doing only what I love with no day job.

I battled a lot of frustration, depression, envy, negativity, etc. as we all do.

I started up my yoga practice again and am on 564 consecutive days of meditation practice.

I tried my best to find gratitude in every day for all the things in my life.

I was lucky enough to have the best, most supportive, amazing partner through every day of highs, lows and all the in betweens. Everything is better and easier with a team, even if you sometimes feel like it’s just two of you against the world.

I continued the incremental (sometimes imperceivable) progress in my career and in my lifelong journey to be the best me I can be. And I look forward to the journey never ending.

I love you all and wish you all happiness in the new year. Thanks to those who love me back regardless of my flaws, May we all enrich each others’ lives and the world at large together. Light and love will always prevail even if it sometimes feels otherwise. Happy New Year!

Up until recently, if you asked me “Are you depressed?” I would have said “Absolutely not. We all have our ups and downs but I’m not depressed.”

The more I’ve learned about depression, the more I’ve realized that maybe I am. The thing is, it’s such a vague word. There’s so many levels at which it can exist. And, unfortunately, it’s kind of a dirty word. Most of don’t want to say it, especially in relation to ourselves. We think of it as this huge thing. Like if you’re “depressed,” that a big, giant, serious issue. That’s not to say that it isn’t, necessarily, but not always. It can be insidiously subtle.

I just thought I was lazy. Uninspired. That I have no willpower to do the things I know I need to do. I’m unproductive. I’m in the worst shape I’ve been in in over a decade. My career isn’t what I’d like it to be. And yet, I often act counter-productively. there’s things I know I could do, that I need to do, and I don’t, or feel that I can’t. I continue to eat crap and want to sleep a lot.

One day Elly (who battles depression herself) said “I think you might be depressed,” and my gut reaction was to resist. I’m not depressed! I’m just in a slump, or lazy, or tired, or just down this week.

The point of this post is not to get comfort or reassurance or virtual hugs or support. The point of this post is to let everyone else out there know, you’re not alone. More people than you know are probably in the same boat. It’s hard to talk about. It’s hard to admit. Every time I thought about making this post, it made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want to talk about it. Or admit it. Or be seen or judged as a “depressed” person. Or be a depressed person.

Now I’m lucky in that my depression (if that’s what it is) is fairly mild and just makes me think I’m a lazy person with absolutely no willpower or discipline (which may be true as well). I truly am, in general, a very happy, silly person with a wonderful life and tons of gratitude for all that I have. That’s not a mask or a front. And that’s what makes it complicated. How can that co-exist with any form of depression, no matter what the “level”? We are complex beings, my friends.

So if you are or have ever been depressed, let me assure you, you are not broken, you are not a freak and it’s not a dirty word never to be spoken. You are in the company of some of the best, brightest, most talented people in the world and throughout history. It does not devalue you as a person. There are so many people fighting battles you know nothing about. Be assured that we are all a community. We are all on our individual journeys but also a collective journey together. Stay strong friends and always remember this: The opposite of Love isn’t Hate, it’s Fear. Love is light. Love is always the answer. Love is my religion. Well that and Jedi. Love Jedi.

I was sitting in playing guitar with ZZ Top. It was very exciting as it was the biggest gig I’d ever played. There were several other musicians filling out the backup band as well besides just the 3 members of ZZ Top though. I hadn’t had any rehearsal and was just completely winging it but was totally comfortable doing so. I set my trusty Variax to its acoustic setting for this one ballad and Billy Gibbons was really digging it. Then we covered “Ex’s and Oh’s” by Elle King. As the solo section approached, I thought “I’m sure Billy will probably grab that,” and he did.

I also had 2 separate dreamlets about Brian and Akasha. In the first, there had been some get together at a bar and a bunch of us were there. Someone handed us a note that was written on a stack of paper, or maybe a book in colorful marker saying the Brian wasn’t going to be able to make it. After the gathering, a bunch of people were going to get something to eat somewhere. Akasha and I jumped in her 2 door red sportscar, but then decided to just hang out and catch up like old times. She needed to go do some clothes shopping any way so we would go do that.

In the second dreamlet, Brian and I were in France. He had just bought a little Fender 1×12 guitar amp which I was toting for him and we were walking along this street checking out a row of flats. He was looking at them because they were thinking of moving to France. It was night but we went in one of them to check it out.

I said “Maybe we can just leave this amp here now if you’re going to move in.”

“Well, we haven’t actually bought it yet, so that’s not really an option,” he said.

I first became a fan of Edgar Allan Poe in my 8th grade advanced honors English class with Mrs. Riley, who is my favorite and most influential of all the teachers I ever had. I even remember writing “A Typical Poe Story” which was a parody of Poe using all the tropes and patterns I had noticed in his work. One of these was how often the word “bosom” seemed to appear.

Recently I had wondered if “bosom” was really as prevalent in his work as I thought it was in 8th grade and my friend, Kevin Gates, had joked “You can thank late 19th century editorial practice for that. In manuscript, Poe actually uses the term ‘sweet-ass titties.'”

When I joked back that I should do a find and replace, Kevin replied, “You’ll see how brilliant Poe actually was, before his work was sanitized.”

So I did. I’m not sure if this is comprehensive but it should be close.

So without further adieu and with apologies to Mrs. Riley, I present to you, many, if not all, of the occurrences of “bosom” in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, replaced with “sweet-ass titties.”

On the sweet-ass titties of the palpitating air!

It vibrated within three inches of my sweet-ass titties!

That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in some sweet-ass titties such as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion.

It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my sweet-ass titties.

About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one small circular island, profusely verdured, reposed upon the sweet-ass titties of the stream.

The arms, the sweet-ass titties, and even the ends of the radiant hair melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the back-ground of the whole.

She was attired in deep mourning, and excited in my sweet-ass titties a feeling of mingled respect, interest, and admiration.

The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the sweet-ass titties and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death.

Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own sweet-ass titties, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me.

Satisfied with having produced in my sweet-ass titties the intended effect, he seemed to chuckle in secret over the sting he had inflicted, and was characteristically disregardful of the public applause which the success of his witty endeavors might have so easily elicited.

This condition was nearly unaltered for a quarter of an hour. At the expiration of this period, however, a natural although a very deep sigh escaped the sweet-ass titties of the dying man, and the stertorous breathing ceased — that is to say, its stertorousness was no longer apparent; the intervals were undiminished.

“How wild a history,” I said to myself, “is written within those sweet-ass titties!”

In the present instance, Eugenie, who for a few moments past had seemed to be searching for something in her sweet-ass titties, at length let fall upon the grass a miniature, which I immediately picked up and presented to her.

No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its sweet-ass titties, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever.

The golden and silver fish haunted the river, out of the sweet-ass titties of which issued, little by little, a murmur that swelled, at length, into a lulling melody more divine than that of the harp of Aeolus-sweeter than all save the voice of Eleonora.

She had seen that the finger of Death was upon her sweet-ass titties — that, like the ephemeron, she had been made perfect in loveliness only to die; but the terrors of the grave to her lay solely in a consideration which she revealed to me, one evening at twilight, by the banks of the River of Silence.

He boasted to me, with a low chuckling laugh, that most men, in respect to himself, wore windows in their sweet-ass titties, and was wont to follow up such assertions by direct and very startling proofs of his intimate knowledge of my own.

Dupin said the last words in a very low tone, and very quietly. Just as quietly, too, he walked toward the door, locked it, and put the key in his pocket. He then drew a pistol from his sweet-ass titties and placed it, without the least flurry, upon the table.

Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own sweet-ass titties, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well.

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my sweet-ass titties’ core;

In this dream, Elly and I were on a road trip with Brian and Akasha Villalobos. We stopped at this gigantic mall. It was possibly the biggest (fictional dream) mall in the world. In the food court there was an Indiana Jones themed fast food place. There was the normal counter manned by employees but behind them was an approximately 2 story tall adventure course made of foam facades, ropes, “traps,” ledges, obstacles, alligators etc. When you ordered, they would give you a temporary Indiana Jones jacket and fedora. The jacket had a whip attached to one side and a holster and shoulder bag on the other so it was a nice one piece fully decked out option. You couldn’t order anything specific, only a general type of food like “vegetarian” or such. Then you got to play through the obstacle course. It wasn’t static either in that once you reached the other side, it could all rotate to make a new scene for you to traverse back the other way. At any given time there were 5 or so customers dressed as Indy up on the adventure course. When you finally finished and dropped down, they would give you a random order (but in line with your general order type specified up front). You might get a burrito, or a burger, or any of a host of other options. That was part of the adventure.

Later in the dream, Brian and I were outside another fast food place somewhere else on our road trip. We were chatting and he had 2 oranges and we were rapidly tossing them back and forth trying to get rid of the one we had before the other was on its way. At one point he had an extremely errant throw (or maybe catch) over his shoulder and an orange came down in a high arc and hit someone’s car. Probably no big deal, as it was an orange, but Brian being Brian insisted on finding something to write a note with/on to leave on the car. Later we were in side finishing up our meal and chatting about some personal relationship stuff he was going through and possibly related sex life stuff.